LC leaders mull pay raise possibility

It’s been a few years since Lake Charles city employees, firemen and policemen have gotten pay raises. The last increases
were in 2008 and 2009. City finances can be complicated, and finding the funds for employee pay raises, even more so.

For City Administrator John Cardone and Finance Director Karen Harrell, the lack of progress isn’t due to a lack of trying.
Friday, the two city officials spent some time discussing the pay raise process.

The discussion began earlier in the
week at the regular City Council meeting. A resolution requesting the
city raise the minimum
wage to $9.50 was dissected before eventually being voted down by
the council. Cardone and Harrell have both spent countless
hours searching for ways to provide the wage increase over the
years and after the resolution was voted down, they wanted
the city employees to know the search isn’t over.

After the city’s new, modified pay plan
was put in place in 2003, a focus was placed on city employees being
able to advance
in their positions through career paths. For example, instead of
an employee being a general maintenance employee, he or she
could be labeled as a general maintenance worker 1, 2 or 3. The
more time and experience the employee gains, the further along
the career path he or she can move. Currently, just increasing the
minimum wage for city employees is a process that would
require a number of steps. Understanding the steps is
understanding the city’s pay scale.

“Although we think that’s a great idea,
it’s not as simple as it sounds because when you raise the starting pay
of a position,
you really have to raise the pay of the others in that range
accordingly,” Cardone said. “So if you would just raise the starting
pay from $8.25 to $9.50 per hour, what that does is that
compresses all those so they’re all the same. It just doesn’t work.”

It would cost the city more than $1.2
million to increase the minimum wage to $9.50 and that only includes
employees in the
career service plan. Still, the city is trying to find ways to
make the raises possible. The early steps consist of surveys.
Every few years, the city conducts salary surveys in hopes of
improving the starting pay and possibly even supplying other
employees with raises.

“The reason we decided not to pursue a
pay increase last year is because of the deficits we’ve been funding the
last several
years. I don’t think anyone would argue that we want to give a pay
increase to our employees,” Cardone said. “We have a great
group of employees, both career, noncareer and public safety, but
you have to have the funds to pay it. If you try to just
increase pay without having the funds to pay for it, that isn’t
very responsible.”

Outside of the effects of the 2008
recession, another component tying the city’s hands when it comes to
wage increases is
the city’s retirement contributions. The cost in 2014 is around
$3.4 million more than it was in 2009. The Fire Department
has increased from 14 percent to 28.25 percent and the Police
Department has increased from 11 percent to 31 percent. Cardone
said because of the state retirement system, the burden falls on
the city to cover the added costs.

“It’s not the fault of the employees. It’s not the fault of the city of Lake Charles,” Cardone said. “We were hoping those
would go down and it would help us out as we go through our process. It continues to go up.”

Harrell said the effects of being in a position where the raises aren’t available is tough for the employees themselves and
the city officials trying to find a way to get them done.

“As we’ve gone through the budget
process the last several years, we’ve discussed the fact that we’ve not
been able to fund
pay raises and how long it had been since our public safety and
career service employees have had an increase. Our career
services have not had increases since 2008, and our fire and
police have not had pay increases since 2009. That’s a long time
to go without a cost-of-living increase,” Harrell said. “It’s our
desire to give pay increases when the funds are available.
There’s only so much money in the pot and when you have those
retirement contributions costing as much as they are, it’s really
hard to be able to increase those salaries anymore than they
already are.”

With the whispers of a possible
economic boom somewhere down the road, the question has been raised
whether the pay raises
are just around the corner. The reality is that even with the new
business coming to the area, a wage increase would still
be years down the road. Even if Lake Charles grows during the
boom, the city would still face operating expenses and infrastructure
improvements to things like the roads, water, sewer and drainage.

“We are optimistic. There’s about $65
billion worth of projects on the books. We think it’s going to have a
positive impact
for the city of Lake Charles and we’re hoping our sales tax
increases, which is a major part of our funding source,” Cardone
said. “We anticipate trying to bring something to the council for
the next budget year, which would be a plan that says this
is what we think our salaries need to be. These are some potential
funding sources.”

As Cardone and Harrell continue to be
creative in their pursuit of one day funding a wage increase, the
importance of improving
the city pay scale to be competitive in the job market is still
key to the officials. Cardone said he doesn’t want the city
to be a training ground for workers.

“To give you an example, our operators
require certifications. They come here, they require certifications from
DEQ. The ones
that work at our wastewater plants and our water plants so they
come here, they get their certifications,” Cardone said. “We
train them and then they go over to the industries next door
because of the higher salary. You’re always going to lose some
employees to job opportunities, but what you want to do is
maintain a majority of your workforce and to do that, you have
to be competitive and we recognize that.”

At the end of the day, the city
continues to battle deficits, pay increasing retirement contributions
and navigate the costs
of infrastructure improvements. Until one aspect becomes stable,
pay raises are still somewhat far away. Cardone and Harrell
continue to pursue viable options because, for them, the city’s
employees are invaluable.

“The administration, the City Council, we all appreciate what our employees do. They do an excellent job. They demonstrate
that time and time again,” Cardone said. “I don’t think you can ask for a better group. It’s just that we’ve been on some
difficult times lately.”

Finding ways to pay employees a higher wage is a difficult situation; however, I do not think that cutting employees to raise the remaining employees wages will help the local economy. Rewarding employees (in some fashion that would be attractive to the individual) for coming up with money saving ideas for the city can be a start. Ask them to participate. combining some of their ideas may be a way to raise their income even if it is temporary and intermittent reward.